notables as William Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Stanford White, Charles Dana Gibson, Ethel Barrymore and Grover Cleveland.
A Presidential Secret
Oneida’ s biggest claim to fame was in service to President Grover Cleveland who, in late June of 1893, reported a rough spot on the roof of his mouth and was promptly diagnosed as having a malignant cancer of the upper palate. The diagnosis has the potential to be fatal unless an operation was performed immediately.
The US economy at the time was in alarming disarray. The Treasury had been seriously depleted by Cleveland’ s predecessor, some 500 banks and 15,000 businesses had gone into bankruptcy and Wall Street was in a shambles trying to sort out the effects of these events. Due to the nation’ s financial instability, Cleveland decided to avoid further panic by having the surgery performed in secret. He asked his friend, Elias Cornelius Benedict, to adapt the Oneida( which Cleveland could board, as he often did, without arousing suspicion) by converting its main salon into a makeshift operating room. The physicians and their patient, who arrived by special train, boarded the yacht on July 3, 1893.
It is difficult to imagine any surgery on a President of the United States being kept under wraps. But in July 1893, not one but two surgeries were performed on the President, and both were kept secret for over a quarter of a century— well past President Cleveland’ s death in 1908.
The Home at Indian Harbor
In 1895, Benedict completed what he must have considered his crowning achievement: an Italianate home on the Greenwich shore known to this day as Indian Harbor. The architect was Thomas Hastings of Carrere and Hastings, who also designed the New York Public Library and the famous Flagler hotels.
Hastings eventually married one of Benedict’ s daughters, and 2,000 guests were invited to the wedding and reception at Indian Harbor, where they were attended to by 1,700 servants. This kind of opulence was nothing new to the peninsula of land that had previously housed the Americus Club, owned and operated by the notorious William“ Boss” Tweed
Benedict iceboating on Long Island Sound at age 71 in 1905.
until he was arrested and indicted in the 1870s. According to a local newspaper, Tweed and his followers held their revels there— wine flowing freely, gold being scattered to the winds.
When Benedict acquired the property, the entire edifice was demolished. The dining room, however, was a wholly separate building, ornate to a point surpassing gaudiness. Despite( or perhaps because of) its design, Benedict had it re-purposed as his boathouse. One relative recalled the showplace aspect of the home and Benedict’ s tendency toward keeping an entourage in tow.
With his massive personality, Benedict had been named“ Commodore” of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club; and with his fervent interest in exploring all things new, he decided to lead sailing expeditions up the Amazon River in 1905. Instead of risking the Oneida, Benedict astutely chartered someone else’ s yacht to explore how rubber was being farmed. His 1905 expedition aboard the Virginia is recorded in Ten Thousand Miles In a Yacht, a book published by one of the guests on the three-month voyage. Highlights include descriptions of rubber gathering that somewhat resembled“ sugaring off” maple trees in New England. Eventually, the yacht Oneida was enlisted to explore the Amazon, stocked with everything imaginable— from snakebite medicine to bandages purchased fresh each spring.
The Oneida would then return Benedict to Indian Harbor and a life that was also
Courtesy of the Greenwich Historical Society marked by a high degree of self-sufficiency. Benedict owned a gas company, so there was gas for the entire estate.“ It had everything,” recalled the late Dr. Horace Bassett, whose father ran the household help.“ It had a windmill, so it drew its own irrigation to water flowers and food grown in the gardens.”
Wall Street Advice
Looking back on his long life and career, Benedict said,“ As I have told young men who have applied to me for advice, don’ t try to compete with the Standard Oil Company; don’ t try to compete with the United States Steel Corporation. Turn your attention to places where the colossal corporations and people do business; hold your hat on the other side of the counter at which they spend their money. They will spend their money. Hold your hat where it is going out.”
Benedict’ s lifetime spanned 22 presidents, from Andrew Jackson through Woodrow Wilson, and the advances he witnessed must have boggled the mind. He saw the telegraph invented, gold discovered in California and the telegraph replaced by the telephone. He helped motor cars replace horse-drawn carriages and saw the Civil War foot soldiers replaced by the fighter pilots of World War I. Benedict’ s original nickname,“ Corny,” was supplanted when Benedict became known, even on Wall Street, as“ The Commodore.”
“ For 64 years I was in Wall Street, the center of our financial storms in this country and the reflex of all the financial storms abroad, and how I was able to stand it I do not know, unless it was through the inherited strength I possess,” Benedict wrote on his 79th birthday.“ And speaking of Wall Street, I would like to say that I never invited anybody to go into it, and I have invited many to stay away from it.”
Whitney McKendree Moore grew up sailing in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Commodore Benedict was( and still is) legendary. Among her published works is an article on him that appeared in the Nautical Quarterly( Number 49). She still writes for publication and is now helping others publish their own books and stories.
www. MoAF. org | Spring 2016 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 33